And Ruin Followed Behind Her

Chapter 9-1

Chapter 9

“You can stay down here as long as you like,” Charlie told me. We were walking down one of the roads carved out between the piles of human souls on either side of us. Charlie balanced on the rows of the moaning corpses like a child would along a balance beam. “Course the heat will take a toll on your physical body as time goes on. In case you were wondering.”

“I wasn’t,” I replied. “And I didn’t ask.”

“I know you didn’t,” Charlie said with a spring in his step. “But you had to be thinking it. I heard you’ve been down here before, but sans body, which means your body was rotting on Earth. That won’t happen this time since you brought your body with you, so you don’t have to worry about it. Of course, your magic won’t work.”

“What are you talking about?” I said, snapping my fingers to try and vanish, but nothing happened. “What the hell? My magic worked last time I was here...at least my wings did.”

“You were just a soul last time, honey, and your wings would work this time too if you were just a soul. ‘Course, you have a body this time, so they won’t work, either.”

I focused my energy, trying to push my wings out through my back, but they wouldn’t come. I tried again, and again, but all it did was make me light headed.

“Don’t do that. It looks like you’re taking a dump.”

“It will work! I know it will.”

“You don’t know Hell at all, huh? It doesn’t work like the surface. Magic don’t work down here. But at least you don’t have to worry about rotting on the surface, or dying, unless of course you die down here. Then I don’t know what will happen to you. Might destroy the whole system for all I know.”

“Let’s hope,” I said.

“Yup. You really don’t know how Hell works. We’re as necessary down here as God is up there.”

“I doubt that. Your job is to corrupt men’s souls. His is to save them.”

Charlie hopped down off the moaning bodies and back onto the road. He held in a chuckle as he craned his neck up to me. “Wait, say that again. I don’t think I heard you right.”

“You have no purpose but to turn men evil.”

Charlie rolled onto the ground, laughing, and kicking his feet into the air. “That’s what I thought you said. I can’t believe—oh my god—that’s—well, that’s so naive is what it is, isn’t it?”

I grabbed Charlie by the ear and brought him to his feet. “I don’t like being made fun of, imp.”

Charlie help up his hands. “I’m very sorry, miss. I didn’t mean to offend, it’s just that I didn’t think people held such backwards beliefs anymore, truth be told.”

“What’s so backwards about it?”

Charlie slapped my hand away from his ear. “Well, let me ask you. What did you do, up there on Earth?”

“Dicked around mostly, with my mama.”

“No,” Charlie said, wagging his finger. “I mean before that. What did you do for work, when you worked?”

“I was a teacher,” I replied proudly.

“Liked it, did you?”

“It was all right,” I said, pulling back my enthusiasm.

“Yeah, but it was a job, right? One of the many offered to you? I suppose you coulda been a nurse or an office manager, too?”

I nodded. “That’s right. It was one of many careers I had to choose from.”

Charlie pointed to a burly demon with thick black horns shoveling humans into a big pile. “And what do you think he’s doing?”

“His jo—no, come on, that’s different.”

“Is it though?” Charlie said to the burly demon. “Hey, buddy! Yeah, you. What’s your name?”

The demon growled for a good fifteen seconds at Charlie. For a moment I thought he offended the great beast and would be eaten—and for a moment I would have been happy to see it—but Charlie looked unconcerned about his potential death. “Yeah, but that’s your demon name. Can you put it in plain English, though? Some of us don’t speak the old tongue.”

The demon growled softly under his breath. “Na-uthal.”

“I heard Nathanial, so for the sake of argument I’m gonna call you Nate, all right?”

“Call me what you will,” the demon said, heaping another shovelful of bodies onto the pile. “I care not.”

“Nate, how long have you worked this job?”

Nate leaned against his shovel. Underneath him, the weight of his body snapped off somebody’s head, which rolled onto the street. “Three hundred and seventeen years.”

Charlie wiped his brow. “Damn, that’s a long time.”

I bent down to pick up the head in front of me, which moaned and screamed in my hands. “Please, kill me. Let me die. Let me die!”

“I have bad news for you,” I said to the head. “You’re already dead.”

Nate scooped the screaming head from my arms and gave me a suspicious look. “I smell something different about you, human.”

“I’m not a human. I’m a pixie.”

“Hmmm,” the demon said. “That must be it.”

Charlie snapped his fingers. “Hey, hey, hey! Over here. I’m asking you a question. Why do you have this job?”

Charlie’s annoyance grabbed Nate’s attention. He looked away from me and over to Charlie. “I have had this job since I lost my other one, and I must work.”

“And what were you doing before this?”

“For ten thousand years I was a bookkeeper in the Tower of Babel, in Dis. It was a good job with normal hours. But then layoffs—”

“Say no more, buddy!” Charlie said, waving his arms. “I get layoffs. I got laid off a dozen times in the last century.”

“Yes, well, you are very annoying. I can see that.” Nate turned back to his work without another word, and I walked away with Charlie.

When we were out of earshot of the demon, Charlie shook his head. “See what I’m saying to you?”

“That it’s just a job?” I asked, confused.

“It’s just a job, my friend,” Charlie said, wagging his finger. “It’s not all we are. It’s just a part of it, just like you weren’t always a teacher.”

“I was a teacher—”

“For a time,” Charlie said, hopping back up on the row of bodies. “And then you weren’t, but you didn’t vanish when you stopped being a teacher, did you?”

“Of course n—”

“Of course not. Exactly. And these guys all have lives outside of torturing people.”

“Yeah, but part of their job is torturing people, right?”

“Well sure it is, but I’m just saying there’s a lot more to them than that.”

I was sick of arguing with him. “Sure.”

*

* * * *

“HOW MUCH FURTHER?” I asked Charlie as we marched down the dirt road toward the walled city in the distance.

“Almost there. You know you’re close to Dis after you pass all the refuse. They try to keep the smell out of the city. We hate that smell.”

“Those are humans,” I replied. “Not refuse.”

“Whatever. Do you know what powers a fourth of Dis? Burning human souls in the pits.”

“See? That’s what I mean. You can’t be good if you are going around burning human souls.”

“Who said anything about good? I certainly never said we were good. You said we were evil. I like to think there is a big ole gray area between a goodie-goodie angel and something like Imogen.”

“Imogen is one of you, though, isn’t she?”

Charlie turned around, more serious than I had ever seen him. “Imogen is nothing like us. She is an abomination, as are her kin.”

“Wow, so there’s something too disgusting even for demons to touch.”

“And you use that word. I’m not a demon. I’m an imp. I don’t go around calling you a fairy, do I?”

“I wouldn’t care if you did.”

“Well, I do. Demons were created from big, muscular, ugly angels. Imps were made from cute, cuddly cherubs, ya dig? Ugly to ugly. Cute to adorable.”

I looked Charlie up and down. He was half goat and half demon, covered in red hair, with tiny spiral horns coming out of his head. His voice was harsh and coarse, but he was right. There was something slightly adorable about him.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“Well, all right then. Just try to be more respectful next time.”

*